Riley at $12.5M/yr always seemed too much based on what we’ve seen this year

I’ll preface this with I think Riley is a good coach and I would have been happy if he became LSU’s coach, but looking back at OU’s games this year, it’s hard to see him worth $12.5M/year at this point. They did have 10 wins, but really struggled to beat supposedly inferior teams. UT collapsed while WVU, Nebraska and KSU were close games. Hell, they even struggled with Kansas for a while. These are all his players…its not like he just took over. Maybe it was a transition year, not sure. But the few games of theirs I watched, they weren’t exactly college football elite.

I understand he has made CFP and won consecutive conference titles; I’m not discounting that. I also know he’s an elite recruiter. My concern was giving him a mega contract at $12.5M per to come to SEC, which is clearly different than Big 12. While there are no guarantees with coaching hires, you really need to be very certain at that price it’s not going to result in middle of pack results.

While I really don’t know about someone like Napier, I’d rather chance paying someone like him $5M per with a much lower buyout. If we get the hire right, we get the same or better result. $12M+ range (at current market rate) has to be a multi-title winner or some NFL coach with incredible resume.